Dave Taylor argues in The Intuitive Life Business Blog that writers should be able to impose their formating preferences on the publications they write for. Hah! I wish him well on his campaign.
After the editors get finished forwarding his impassioned pleas to their friends and co-workers, with caustic comments attached, they’ll go for drinks with each other and shudder at the prospect of each story in a magazine having its own unique visual style.
Taylor is completely right that some things in this world are designed by the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Magazines and newspapers, on the other hand, tend to be designed by professional designers, to improve the reading experience for us, the readers.
When Taylor recently submitted an article to a magazine, he was appalled to find that his text formating was being removed by their composition system.
What Taylor sees as the tail wagging the dog (he’s the writer, so he’s the dog), is actually a case of the dog (the editors are in charge of the content of the publication) wagging the tail (the writer, who is commissioned to write something that will be edited and formatted to fit the writing style and visual guidelines for the publication).
Dave wants a particular word to be bolded? Fine, as long as it’s on his blog, where he’s the dog. If publications altered their style guidelines for each different writer, guess what? They wouldn’t have a consistent style, and readers would hate it.
If readers are used to a newspaper or web site bolding company names, what are they going to think when Dave decides to bold a quote form a source. Is the quote a company name, the reader is wondering. Variations from the publication’s style create confusion, which may make the writer feel good, but it doesn’t encourage the reader to renew their subscription.
Taylor’s right, the dog should wag the tail. He just needs to realize that when his writing appears in a publication that has a style its readers are used to, he’s the tail, not the dog.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Dave Taylor // Sep 20, 2005 at 9:48 am
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Erik. There are a couple of facets to my discussion that I think are being breezed past, however, not the least of which is that my core argument is that READABILITY, that is, the ability of the reader to comprehend exactly what the writer tried to convey, is directly related to the number of obstacles that are placed between the writer and the reader. If I have an atypical style of using italics and bold, then any decent editor should *communicate with me* and we’ll then go back and forth to find a happy compromise.
Instead, I submitted my article to a magazine that *automatically strips out all formatting*, making it impossible for me to even utilize common typographic conventions to convey information to my readers. It’s not quite “blogger complaining about the big world of publishing”, is it?
There’s also a significant difference between our perspectives because we’re both dancing around the fundamental question: are words commodities? That is, are writers just suppliers of words that are then sculpted and massaged into what the publication needs, or are they (or at least the good ones!) more akin to artists supplying carefully crafted prose that they have a reasonable expectation will be reproduced in a reasonably accurate form?
For background info, I’ve been senior editor at a national magazine, I’ve written hundreds of columns and thousands of articles for magazines, and I’ve also written twenty books. I’ve got a bit of experience with this edit cycle.
A very interesting discussion!
2 Donna // Sep 20, 2005 at 12:00 pm
You’re very right, Eric. One more thing that most readers are not aware of — writers DO NOT usually write the headline for the story. So besides not being in control of things like italics and other formatting, we scribes have very little say in the head that the magazine or newspaper slaps on the story.
3 Eric Eggertson // Sep 20, 2005 at 12:29 pm
Dave: Having been on the intake end of paper-based and online publications and content management tools, I’ve been bitten in the butt by hidden text formatting more than it’s been useful, so I suspect the publication in question is probably responding to some past disasters when some code that wasn’t noticed before makes a noticeable formatting change to the version that got printed or posted online.
MS Word in particular seems to carry many surprised in the way it codes text.
Yes, it’s annoying when editors make what seem like very arbitrary changes to text, with no explanation. And it would be nice if the companies that strip out all formatting let you know in advance, so you could 1) not waste your time on formatting; 2) send along a marked-up copy so they know how you want it to look 3) decide in advance if it’s something you want to argue over.
Sorry if I oversimplified your argument a bit, but I was making a point that the editor and writer often BOTH think they’re the one calling the shots, and generally it’s mostly the editor, and partly the writer who calls the shots.
4 Eric Eggertson // Sep 20, 2005 at 12:31 pm
Donna: That’s a particular problem when the headlines, captions and call-outs are either very boring or very bombastic. Your by-line is right there, whereas the assistant editor who penned the headline is blissfully anonymous!
5 Wendy Sharp // Sep 21, 2005 at 2:41 pm
I had the same thought, Eric, although for different reasons. And a different opinion on who the dog is! The readers are the ultimate dogs: we need to meet their needs. Since their need is generally for information to be delivered as quickly and as efficiently and as accurately as possible, spending tons of time on unnecessary formatting is not doing them a service. If each and every article (or book, in my case) needs to be hand-massaged and individually formatted, publication will inevitably be delayed: is the difference in readability from a word being bolded or italicized really worth the extra time it would cost in production? In my opinion, definitely not. Tell me a formatting change affects accuracy, and maybe I’ll change my mind!